GUEST COLUMN: Benedict's resignation could reshape the papacy

View full sizePope Benedict XVI leaves after greeting the faithful from the balcony window of the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, the scenic town where he will spend his first post-Vatican days and made his last public blessing as pope.Associated Press

The greatest legacy of Pope Benedict XVI’s abrupt resignation could well be the vigorous discussion and debate it has sparked. Energized Catholics of many minds from distant corners of the church are airing their views on the purpose of the church and what they want from the papacy.

Nothing like this broad exchange has been seen since the Second Vatican Council redefined major elements of the church in the early 1960s. Changes such as providing an English language mass and dropping requirements such as fish on Friday sparked similar excitement and argument on a wider scale but with the same kind of intensity back then.

Though Benedict’s exit was the immediate cause, the speak-out testifies to the depths of pent-up reaction to the child abuse scandals and documented Vatican corruption which have grown into a crisis and likely hastened Benedict’s leaving. With the vacancy, attention has fixed more directly on the nature of the papacy and the need for remedies.

The upside to this clamor is that Catholics of all stripes care enough about the church to throw their thoughts and opinions into the hopper. There is hope for something better though the voices are often critical and scoffing.

In the long run, the spontaneous debate and analysis could deliver Catholicism an enormous benefit by setting the church on a course to attune the papacy better to the times and to end the Vatican’s isolation and excessive control over church affairs.

This is an “iffy” proposition, to be sure. There is no guarantee that the stranglehold of the Curia, aka “the world’s oldest bureaucracy,” will be weakened or that its governing apparatus will be redesigned to serve the church better. The key is whether future popes have sufficient boldness and support from the wider church to buck centuries of inertia and refusal to revise or overturn the rulings of their predecessors. Such rubber stamping has paralyzed the church.

But if such innovations do happen, they would require an open and creative outpouring of views such as the one taking place now. A passive, disinterested, discouraged climate changes nothing. The Vatican insists that its policies are divinely mandated and have nothing to do with the attitudes of the faithful. Those attitudes in a Tweeter age are much harder to ignore, however.

So the flurry of personal and scholarly proposals lining the path of the 115 cardinal-electors may be making a difference in this revolutionary communication age, whether it inclines them toward conservative or liberal ends.

Benedict’s unseen presence could be a restraining influence. He has vowed total loyalty to the new pope, but successors don’t as a rule rebuff their former bosses even when the previous pontiff has died.

Benedict’s decision is widely believed to have changed the stature of the papacy. While he was the supreme head of the Catholic church with vast authority over its proceedings church and aura of infallibility, quitting the job emphasizes human limitation and this-worldliness that contrasts with its image of supernatural power. Benedict has, perhaps self-consciously, returned the papacy to earth.

Some Catholic conservatives worry that such grounding could weaken the pope’s persona as the “vicar of Christ” and defender of the faith. Liberals, on the other hand, see a more modestly defined papacy as the precondition of narrowing the gap between pope and people and opening church councils to the laity.

Meanwhile, a profusion of wish lists press their agendas for a new pope. If the cardinals cull those lists and the key traits, they might look for a candidate such as the following.

Among other things, he would be a towering authority with egalitarian instincts, otherworldly with a magnetic earthiness, a firm defender of doctrine with a reform bent, a solitary intellectual with immense popular appear, a traditionalist who adapts to history, and a strict moralist who tolerates conscientious dissent.

Let the discussion continue.

Ken Briggs, former religion editor at The New York Times, lives in Easton and is author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.”